


Killer Grammar

by huurrehenki



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén
Genre: Gen, Gore, Gratuitous German, No Spoilers, Omnicidal MC, POV Second Person, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:46:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21781666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huurrehenki/pseuds/huurrehenki
Summary: Beautiful. You love it when grammar works so nicely in tandem with your own sense of dramatics.What's a supervillain to do with a note in a foreign language, found on one of their victims post-battle?Use it for drama, of course.
Kudos: 3





	Killer Grammar

**Author's Note:**

> It's been close to ten years since I've shown anyone anything that I've written, and this is how I make my comeback? I don't know whether to facepalm or be proud of myself, but either way, I blame this weird and wonderful fandom for giving me the courage to share my writings after such a long time.
> 
> I wrote this during NaNoWriMo for a challenge between my region and Germany (the prompt was to include a sentence in German in the text). It kind of ran away from me, but I'll admit that it was fun to write about an omnicidal MC for a change.

Yawn.

You sigh and put your hands on your hips as you survey the scene in front of you. This is getting old. Don’t these wannabe heroes have any new tricks up their sleeves? They know they only get one shot at taking you down, and still they waste their lives like this?

Pathetic.

You start walking amongst the corpses, courtesy of the battle – well, you guess it can be called a battle by some definition of the word, but you prefer to go with "massacre" instead, it’s more accurate – that you just finished. There are nine of them on the ground, wonderfully lit up in the lights from the news helicopters hovering in the sky.

It’s getting boring to wind up with variations of the same kind of scene every other week, but you suppose there will never be a shortage of idiotic heroes wanting to put a stop to your rampage. Good luck to them. You’d welcome a challenge, you’re tired of these bit players. You’re not even sure what made this particular group come after you with such vehemence. You know they were German or something, did they take exception to the name you picked when you became a villain? It wouldn’t even be amongst the dumbest reasons heroes go after villains.

While you ponder if you should posture a little for the cameras or get out of here before you have to deal with the nuisance of the LDPD showing up, your attention is drawn to something by one of the corpses. A piece of paper? How novel in this day and age.

You bend down to pick it up, wondering if you can make this into a dramatic scene somehow, but when you read what is written on the page your grin becomes even wider than usual. You decide to hold the paper in a way that will make it as easy as possible for the press to get a picture of it. The note is written in a blocky hand, easy enough to read even at a distance, you hope.

"DIETER," it says, and you savor the words as you read them aloud, "ES TUT MIR LEID. SIE IST GESTORBEN. Aww, that’s heart-rending, a lady friend of yours is dead? Oh well, I guess you can be together now, in whatever passes for the afterlife. If you believe in that garbage, anyway."

You make a show of looking at the bodies all around you, in various states of disfigurement. According to the note, a woman is dead, and judging by this desperate attack, it has to be someone important and you’re the cause of her death. Probably that lady you slew a couple of days ago. Ah, that was a fight to remember, you’ll cherish her memory for a while.

Not like these chumps.

"Well, Dieter," you say, using your armored boot to nudge the body of the man who had probably been holding the note. "If this was an attempt at vengeance, I must say I’m not impressed. Here, let me make this note a little truer to reality, too. I think it could do with an update."

You crouch down so you can dip your hand in the blood that hasn’t congealed yet, then lay the paper on the man’s lightly armored chest and drag your finger over the paper, lovingly drawing the new letters on it. When you’re done, you leave the paper stuck to his armor as you rise to your feet with a smile.

"There we go. Much better. But sadly this was barely worth my time, I’m bored now. Better luck to whoever wishes to take me on in the future!" You laugh, the distorters turning your voice into its usual unearthly cackle, and turn around to stride away.

No one tries to stop you, of course; at this point only the Rangers, the Guardians, or the special strike forces of the LDPD might even have a chance of stopping you. Hopefully this little encounter has given them some incentive to come after you at their full strength.

As you make your way to an alley where you can have the nanovores eat a way into the sewer system so you can get out of sight and head back to your base, you can feel your grin linger.

You’re rather proud of yourself and the little amendment you made to the note. Not some pathetic "sie ist" anymore; why leave it at that when you could so easily make it truer by changing one word only. SIE SIND GESTORBEN – now that has a nicer ring to it. Not "she is" but "they are".

Come to think of it, that’s a pretty nice way to summarize your fights most of the time. One dead, many dead.

Beautiful. You love it when grammar works so nicely in tandem with your own sense of dramatics.

Hopefully the press will like it just as much.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to make it so that the German bits can be understood from the context, but here are the actual translations:
> 
> \- "Es tut mir leid" = "I'm sorry" (literally "it does me pain/hurts me")  
> \- "Sie ist gestorben" = "She is dead"  
> \- "Sie sind gestorben" = "They are dead"


End file.
